Modeling the mechanical and compression properties of polyamide/elastane knitted fabrics used in compression sportswear

A compression sportswear fabric should have excellent stretch and recovery properties in order to improve theperformance of the sportsman. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of elastane linear density andloop length on the stretch, recovery, and compression properties of the weft-knitted polyamide/elastane (PA/EL)stretchable fabrics used in sportswear. Two different tests were performed to study the stretch and recovery properties ofthe fabric 1st: under low power force and 2nd: cyclic loading under high tension force. Kikuhime pressure sensor wasused to measure the pressure generated by different PA/EL knitted sample garment sleeves. It was found that with theincrease in elastane linear density there is an increase in fabric course density, areal density, recovery percentage, andcompression, and fabric stretch percentage and elongation percentage decreased in both course and wale direction. Theresults of fabric samples were analyzed in Minitab statistical software. The coefficients of determinations (R2 values) ofthe regression equations showed good prediction ability of the developed statistical models